War of words as race en­ters home stretch

HIL­LARY Clin­ton and Don­ald Trump, sens­ing the ur­gency of a pres­i­den­tial cam­paign en­ter­ing its home stretch, as­sailed one an­other on mul­ti­ple fronts and in coarse terms as new data showed them in a dead heat.

It was an­other day of scathing re­bukes, in­tense rhetoric and tit-for-tat ac­cu­sa­tions as the bit­ter ri­vals sought to claim the ad­van­tage with vot­ers just nine weeks be­fore the Novem­ber 8 elec­tion.

In Florida, Ms Clin­ton branded Mr Trump a “dem­a­gogue” and de­clared his cam­paign to be “one long in­sult”.

After the brash bil­lion­aire made a sud­den trip to Mex­ico last week to meet Pres­i­dent En­rique Pena Ni­eto, Ms Clin­ton said Mr Trump choked be­cause he failed to dis­cuss his de­mand that Mex­ico pay for Mr Trump’s bor­der wall.

Mr Trump has edged ahead of Ms Clin­ton in a new CNN/ORC poll, at 45 per­cent to 43pc among likely vot­ers, while an NBC News poll of reg­is­tered vot­ers shows Ms Clin­ton’s lead at six per­cent­age points – 48pc to 42pc.

An­other sur­vey, by The Wash­ing­ton Post, look­ing at all 50 states shows Ms Clin­ton with a solid lead in terms of elec­toral col­lege votes, and even strength in some tra­di­tional Repub­li­can strongholds.

Ms Clin­ton, how­ever, said she pays no at­ten­tion to polls.

“We’re stick­ing with our strat­egy. We feel very good about where we are,” she said.

But the polls show how close the race is look­ing ahead of the vote, mak­ing the bat­tle for the so-called swing states all the more crit­i­cal.

Ms Clin­ton ral­lied sup­port­ers at a voter reg­is­tra­tion event in swing state Florida, while the bil­lion­aire real es­tate mogul held a town hall meet­ing with mil­i­tary vet­er­ans be­fore head­ing to North Carolina for an evening cam­paign rally.

“We have 62 days – just 62 days – to make the case, and I can’t do it without you,” Ms Clin­ton said.

She took pains to make her­self more than avail­able to re­porters trav­el­ling with her, after nearly nine months without hold­ing a for­mal press con­fer­ence, tak­ing ques­tions for more than 20 min­utes on her plane for a sec­ond-straight day on Septem­ber 6.

Ms Clin­ton had sharp words for Mr Trump, de­scrib­ing him as “dead wrong” for say­ing that his tax re­turns were not the con­cern of ev­ery­day Amer­i­cans, de­spite ev­ery ma­jor pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee since Richard Nixon re­leas­ing their taxes be­fore the elec­tion.

Ms Clin­ton also re­peated her charge that Mr Trump is “tem­per­a­men­tally un­fit” for the of­fice. Be­fore some 1500 sup­port­ers in Tampa, she de­nounced him as a “dem­a­gogue” prey­ing on Amer­i­cans’ in­se­cu­ri­ties.

Mr Trump as­sured vet­er­ans in Vir­ginia Beach that he was in their cor­ner, and used the op­por­tu­nity to slam Ms Clin­ton’s in­ef­fec­tive­ness as a top diplo­mat and politi­cian.